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The cover of McMaster’s memoir “At War with Ourselves.”

According to Donald Trump’s national security adviser, the former president once asked in a conversation about South Korea, “Why are we defending people who hate us?”

HR McMaster, who served as national security adviser during the Trump administration, wrote in his memoir that the former president made the comment while complaining about the US’ trade deficit with Korea.

McMaster’s memoir, titled “At War with Ourselves: My Tour of Duty in the Trump White House,” was published on Tuesday.

According to McMaster, Trump believed that the US was being harmed by its free trade agreement with South Korea.

Peter Navarro, who was director of trade and manufacturing policy under Trump, and other officials had repeatedly pushed Trump to scrap the Korea-US Free Trade Agreement and even presented a draft announcement to that effect.

But McMaster wrote that he and other advisers had blocked those efforts, believing that withdrawing from the trade deal with Korea would be a bridge too far.

In his memoir, McMaster described a vivid anecdote about Trump’s viewpoint on South Korea’s defense burden-sharing agreement with the US. The episode occurred during Trump’s visit to Korea in 2017, in his first year in office.

Trump was on a helicopter ride back to Seoul from the Camp Humphreys military base in Pyeongtaek, Gyeonggi Province, when Gen. Vincent Brooks, commander of US Forces Korea, mentioned that Korea was paying for US$9.8 billion of the US$10.8 billion cost of base construction. But Brooks was taken aback when Trump retorted that Korea ought to cover 100% of the cost.

When Trump was wrestling with the issue of North Korea’s nuclear weapons and missiles at the beginning of his term, he asked McMaster on several occasions, “Why don’t we get out of South Korea and let Russia and China deal with North Korea?” McMaster also said that from the beginning of his presidency, Trump had called for “maximum pressure” to be applied to North Korea, so that Pyongyang would know that “if they threaten us and our allies, they will face a response that is overwhelming.”

McMaster said the Trump administration had hoped China would play a major role in resolving the North Korean nuclear issue. According to the former national security adviser, Chinese President Xi Jinping and other Chinese leaders had agreed that the North Korean nuclear issue was a global threat and that “maximum pressure” was the right approach in a summit at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s private club and estate in Palm Beach, in 2017.

During that summit, Trump reportedly told Xi that China “could solve the problem in two seconds” if it so desired. But China played for time and ended up dashing Trump’s hopes, McMaster said.

McMaster wrote that he and other advisers had looked into military options against North Korea such as seizing its ships, but such ideas had been opposed by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Defense Secretary James Mattis on the grounds they might lead to war.

One time, McMaster had to drop out of a conference call with Mattis and Tillerson because of news about a North Korean missile launch. Without realizing that McMaster’s aides were still on the line, Tillerson complained that the national security adviser was pushing a hard-line policy toward North Korea, leading Mattis to describe McMaster as an “unstable asshole.”

McMaster also recalled Trump as quipping, “Why don’t we take out the whole North Korean army during one of their parades?” during a discussion on responses to North Korea. According to McMaster, Trump made such comments “only to entertain or shock those assembled.”

By Lee Bon-young, Washington correspondent

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